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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26141155">Circadian Rhythm (An Ineffable Plan Outtake)</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebright1/pseuds/thebright1'>thebright1</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>An Ineffable Plan: A Canon Compliant Love Story [30]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman &amp; Terry Pratchett</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), 6000 Years of Slow Burn (Good Omens), Angst, Aziraphale and Crowley Through The Ages (Good Omens), Crowley Has Feelings (Good Omens), Crowley is a Mess (Good Omens), Limewire, M/M, Pining, Soul Bond, Welcome to the 00s, destruction of property</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-27</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 03:54:47</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,620</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26141155</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebright1/pseuds/thebright1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A missing scene from <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23081191/chapters/55213303">An Ineffable Plan</a>. Crowley messes up his circadian rhythm and needs to get it back.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>An Ineffable Plan: A Canon Compliant Love Story [30]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1620406</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>25</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Circadian Rhythm (An Ineffable Plan Outtake)</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I saw <a href="https://spaceratatouille.tumblr.com/post/627301619219972096/i-had-an-idea-and-i-need-someone-who-is-good-at">this prompt</a> on Tumblr and got inspired for the first time in months. Maybe I'm back on the horse. . . . we'll see what the future holds. I do have plans for my WIPs. </p><p>Also, I still don't speak Mandarin. If you do, and see mistakes, please let me know.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>August 26, 2006, 2:01 am</p><p>Crowley rolls onto his back and stares at the floor of his bedroom. The ceiling isn’t working much better, either. He wouldn’t mind the insomnia so much if he wasn’t so used to sleeping. He certainly *can* stay up all night, and for quite a few nights honestly, without feeling too worse for the wear. He even spent the past couple of weeks seeing if he could cure this ache in his chest by drinking copious amounts of alcohol and never sleeping— it didn’t work. Instead he’d found himself staring mournfully at his watch in a Las Vegas casino at 4am talking with a doddering old woman about her husband’s pension, while she played the penny slots. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>June 25, 2006, 4:00 am</p><p> </p><p>“Harry’s gonna be so pissed, but I just don’t give a flying fuck right now after what he said to me. If he can spend a thousand dollars on a golfing trip I can take a couple hundred to sit here and enjoy myself.” She sips her gin and tonic, eyes him up and down. “You’re too young to look so somber,” she says, as she slaps the replay button. “Where’s your boyfriend?”</p><p>Crowley sighs. “He doesn’t want to talk to me.” Then he frowns and looks over at her. “Hang on, how did you . . . Have we met?”</p><p>She laughs. “No, but I’ve lived in Vegas my entire life and I’ve never seen a straight man dress like you.” She wins $20, slaps the replay button again.</p><p>Crowley wants to take offense, but she’s American and old and he just doesn’t care that much. He idly swishes his lower half back and forth on the spinning stool next to her. He looks down and watches the face of his watch switch over to 4:01am. He can’t remember what time it is in London. It doesn’t matter. Aziraphale would still be up, buzzing around his bookshop...</p><p>“He’s the quiet sort, then?” the granny next to him asks. She adjusts her bra strap and slaps the replay button.</p><p>“What?” Crowley says.</p><p>“Your boyfriend owns a bookshop, you said.”</p><p>“Did I say that out loud?” Crowley wonders.</p><p>The old woman cackles. “Too much Vegas for you, <em>mogwai.</em>” She pushes the cash out button, and grabs her ticket. “You need to sleep.”</p><p>Crowley shakes his head. “No, I- I’m doing fine.” He throws his arms out to demonstrate just how fine he is, and falls over backwards. He blinks a few times and squints up at the lights. A face comes into view above him. Curly white hair haloed by the too bright overheads. “Aziraphale?” Crowley asks. His vision refocuses. It’s the old woman. She crouches down next to him.</p><p>She smiles gently. “It is you,” she murmurs. “Just like <em>Zǔmǔ’</em>s stories.” Then louder she says, “No, <em>mogwai</em>. Not your <em>Tiānshǐ.</em>” She places two finger under his eyes and yanks them down hard. He wants to pull away but he’s frozen in place. She leans close to him. He can smell gin on her breath. She rounds her lips and blows into his eyes, hard, before she releases his face and whistles loudly. Crowley can’t move. He is so tired. “Go back to London, <em>mogwai</em>. And sleep.”</p><p>Crowley feels himself being hauled off the floor, hustled through the bustling casino, pushed towards the lobby, stark white light and blinding heat ahead of him . . .</p><p> </p><hr/><p>August 26, 2006, 2:05am</p><p>And instead of walking into the Las Vegas early morning, he’d walked straight into his flat in Mayfair. He didn’t remember calling up a demonic miracle or getting on a plane and traveling the human way. He’d slept for two months and woken up this morning feeling thirsty. He didn’t remember changing into pajamas or laying down. When he thought about it, he could only remember the elderly woman’s eyes and her voice ringing in his head. It had been a surreal and disturbing experience. And not one he wanted to repeat.</p><p>So now he’s trying to turn over a new leaf, to use a human idiom. Trying to get back into the habit of regular sleep. He spent the day hanging about the flat, listening to the radio and yelling at his plants. He took himself on a nice long drive, purposefully not driving anywhere near Soho and going extra fast because he could. He even spent a long time stretching and doing some yoga moves that it would take a human a lifetime of dedicated practice to achieve. He feels loose and limber. He’s in his black silk pajamas, and he is ready for sleep.</p><p>If only sleep were ready for him. He’d tried the bed first, then the couch, then the floor, the bathtub (always a favorite in snake form), and now the ceiling. All his favorite places aren’t working. His mind drifts and his body feels too constricting. He lets loose his wings and watches a few stray black feathers drift to the floor. He can hear a car outside honk, and he sneers, snaps his fingers and then hears a crash. He growls as he hears angry shouts outside. He pulls his wings around him, covering his head, trying to block out the noise. It works. It’s too quiet now though. Deathly quiet. He needs some noise, something distracting, something pleasant, familiar.</p><p>He needs Aziraphale.</p><p>He hurls himself to the ground, forgetting about his wings, which knock into the bedside lamp. It’s glass, and fragile, and clatters to the floor, breaking into a thousand shiny, painful pieces.</p><p>Seeing the lamp shattered and broken stirs something in him. Why not break everything? Everything! You’ve already fucked up and broken the most important things. Why not break some unimportant things?</p><p>He snaps his fingers and the other bedside lamp throws itself against a wall. It’s not as satisfying so he takes one of the paintings off the wall and throws it in the ground. That feels better. He begins to systematically destroy the room. He tears down the curtains, rips pillows, punches holes in the wall. He pulls the bathroom door off the hinges, shatters the bedroom mirror with his fist. He’s getting properly worked up now. He can feel the blood singing in his veins as rhe anger burns through him. Why did this have to happen to <em>him</em>? What the fuck was he supposed to do? Never sleep again? Because of one stupid bender? Was it fucking worth it to not sleep for weeks and now be cursed to never sleep again? For what? Because of what? Because of a stupid mistake? Was Aziraphale really never going to talk to him again because he pushed too hard one time? 6000 years together— bonded to each other— and Aziraphale just throws him away because he pushed too hard one time? He apologized didn’t he? But Heaven doesn’t accept apologies, do they? They don’t accept mistakes. That’s why Aziraphale and he have to sneak around anyway, isn’t it? Because Aziraphale can’t even go to his side and say ‘I accidentally soul bonded myself to a demon, can someone help me break it?’ Crowley has taken all of the clothes out of his closet, stripped the bed, shredded all the fabrics. With an angry roar he lifts up the mattress and throws it against the wall. The box spring sits there mocking him so he puts his fist through it, grabs one obnoxious self satisfied smug spring and uses it to launch the whole apparatus through the glass door of the bedroom. He listens to the glass cascade to the ground and it sounds like music to his ears. A Bach symphony.</p><p>All at once the fight leaves him, and he collapses into a panting, sweaty heap on the floor. In front of him lies a small hard sided suitcase. A camera case. He blinks. It must have been under the bed. He’d forgotten about it. Forgotten about finding it under Aziraphale’s bed, and miracling it away to his own flat for safe keeping after Gabriel’s surprise inspection.</p><p>He sighs. It was only a few years ago, but it seems like such better, simpler times. He’d slept that night. Slept peacefully, listening to Aziraphale humming, to the sound of books being shelved, pages being turned. Like a lullaby.</p><p>Maybe that’s what he needs, a lullaby. Someone to sing him to sleep. Crowley stands and briskly strides through the mess he’s made of the bedroom. He snaps his fingers as he leaves, and the room begins righting itself, hiding away the evidence of a demonic temper tantrum.</p><p>He marches into his office, throws himself into the throne and opens up his laptop. He pulls up Limewire and begins searching, downloading, and, because he is a demon, seeding as well.</p><p>He listens to a few seconds of each track before stopping it. He tries multiple keywords. Bach lullabies. Lullabies classical. Library lullabies. Book shop lullabies.</p><p>Then he finds what he is looking for. The track is called “Ambient Bookstore Noise for Patti’s Film”. He downloads the file, makes an infinte looping playlist, and listens attentively. Soft classical music is barely audible. There is the sound of turning pages, the sound of books sliding over each other. Crowley closes his eyes. He pictures himself splayed on the couch in Aziraphale’s back room. There is the gentle creak of old floorboards. The sounds of someone else breathing. Crowley imagines Aziraphale putting books away, shuffling here and there around him, his ever industrious angel, not taking a moment to rest. Not like Crowley. Crowley slides into the throne, leans his head against the velvet backing. He imagines it is the worn velvet of Aziraphale’s waistcoat.</p><p>Crowley sleeps.</p><p> </p><p>FIN</p>
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